A MURDER IN FLORIDA REVIVES AN EARLIER HORROR AND RAISES QUESTIONS ABOUT THE AFTERMATH OF PUNISHMENT

There is a theory held by some criminologists that evil eventually melts out of the body. That if you warehouse a man in jail long enough, he will become harmless. Youth's passions dim. Perversion's fires cool. Old felons may not exactly reform but are defanged by time. It is this theory that Lawrence Singleton contested last week, after his bloody fashion.

Last Wednesday a painter spotted a struggle while working on a neatly kept house in Tampa's working-class Orient Park suburb. Inside, a naked man appeared to be throttling a naked woman. The witness called 911, and when a police officer...